Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #62

Dear Comic Bastards, It is with a heavy heart that I must resign from reviewing Turtles comics.

I do this for fun, you see, because a wide array of varying media contributes very heavily to one's critical spectrum. To find out what works and what doesn't work in storytelling, one must seek every avenue, must look to both good and bad and find out which pieces make the machine go and which make it stop in its track.

I'm done reviewing TMNT comics because I've learned everything that I can from them, namely boiling down to two separate things: Variety is, as ever, the spice of life; and you cannot escape one's origins. The best parts of the Turtles have never been its direct origins, the original comics were equal parts goofy in that they were a shockingly violent parody of Daredevil, and uncomfortable in that they weren't... particularly good.

The Turtles lineage, even as a cartoon, has always been soaked in its original parody-origins; the Turtles were never Batman in ever sense of the term: did not have the moral fiber, did not have the obsessive streak, did not have a stick up their collective turtle butts and they weren't quite as skilled as a man who's entire claim to legacy is being good at literally everything.

Whether you were laughing at the joke or laughing at the fact that the Turtles themselves act in fun, humorous ways, they always had a levity to them in a Deadpool sort of way that refused to conform to average comic stories. The fact that it was four turtles raised by a rat and in the ways of ninjitsu to fight a ninja clan leader and his mutated rhino and warthog lackeys was supposed to mean that, due to circumstance, the Turtles couldn't fall prey to feeling like every other goddamned comic.

Lo and behold, though, the clowns have all been shoo'd away, Shredder's gone, the main villain is Kitsune, an ancient Japanese god and the conflict revolves, in this issue, a human being kidnapped and Mikey coming back to his family after having left not even two issues ago.

Characters like Baxter Stockman, the Rat King, Shredder, Bebop, Rocksteady and even new addition Old Hob are now revealed to not only have been great additions but, in reality, necessary to the Turtles universe. The turtles themselves can be corrupted by samey continuity-tying comic nonsense, the same kind you see in Average Evil-Fighter Issue #596. When the turtles' main enemy is both a boring Japanese god and their own inner conflict and nothing else, there is no situational barrier keeping the turtles being as boring as their writer is.

Is this particular issue bad? It's the same as the last thousand, little moves, character relationships are reinforced so if the last couple of issues were bad then you'd better damn well be sure that this issue's bad too. I would take any version of the turtles over this because every single version tried something new and untested, even the bad ones. The third Turtles movie brought them to Feudal Japan. Bad, but interesting. The CG Turtles movie put the Turtles inner conflict at front and center, with the bad guy being the side story for a change. Kind bad, but interesting. The New Mutation added a girl turtle. REALLY bad but it wasn't stale, Goddammit. Splinter being the head of the foot clan doesn't change anything for the story, it's incidental! This changes nothing for the minute to minute of how the Turtles comics read!

I should give this one a one out of five but it doesn't deserve it because the level of effort here is same consistent level it's been keeping for months. It's not Turtles that's changed, it's my growing annoyance with it.

Someone hit me up on Twitter if it starts getting interested again. Find me at @MrFistSalad. While I'm at it with the self-promotion, check out The Dolridge Sacrament, published by Alterna Comics! Give your money to me and not this goddamn Turtles comic. Or go get a burger with that money.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #62 Writer: Tom Waltz Artist: Dave Wachter Publisher: IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #61

I write comic reviews because I personally find it fun. I analyze stories and comics and movies in my spare time anyway and honestly, the people around me are sick of hearing it. Funneling this into written reviews is good, and I honestly look forward to it. So why did I have to drag my way through TMNT #61? I even have fun analyzing bad fiction, as the unique things that can make a story bad can be at least interesting to talk about, but I read Turtles #61 two days before starting this review, I didn’t like it then, and it’s only settled on my memory worse as the hours passed by. Don’t tell my editor it took me two days to get here. I mean it didn’t. I only got to it now. Because of time stress. Obviously. Don’t fire me.

I had to drag my way through #61 because it’s the worst kind of continuation issue: a boring, overly-wordy re-establishment of the status quo. They’re neither interesting to read nor are they interesting to talk about. The act of reading Turtles #61 reminds me of how it must feel to be the parent of a young child or my girlfriend, being told useless facts about comic minutia ad nauseum with none of the excitement of actually experiencing the work itself.

I’ve been put on record saying that comics are often better when they allow their "in-between" issues to stretch their legs and allow for the comic as a whole to feel more cohesive and well thought out, rather than panicking to make each and every issue an exciting series of climactic events in order to justify its entry fee.

The problem is, however, that this theoretical leg stretching should exist at the service of the plot, in order to give room to the individual moments that are important for feel or atmosphere. There’s not a person on Earth who genuinely wants the famous knight in the archetypal "saving the princess" story to skip over the journey to the dragon’s lair just so we can see the big fight with the dragon. Atmosphere is important. However, one of the most difficult tasks for any writer is to balance the acts of exposition and atmosphere because the two concepts are almost completely incompatible.

So answer me this: when an issue has exactly _ continuity points that it needs to exposit before moving on to bigger events, there’s a new gang in town, Alopex is missing, the world is becoming more dangerous, and Mikey is unhappy with how events are unfolding; why on Earth would you spend this much time expositing these things through dialogue? Michelangelo himself comments that the meeting that takes up the vast majority of the issue feels like ‘a stupid war counsel’ and I couldn’t help but agree. The "planning" scene of any war movie is usually very short for the same reason that heist movies usually overlay the monologue of the heist planning over the heist’s execution. Explaining a series of events that is going to come to pass so that you can be informed about them again as they’re happening is very, very boring.

What small bits of character development and recuperation from previous events we receive feels token and unnecessary. The Purple Dragon characters are as boring as they’ve ever been, much like the ancestral God characters, dragging the story and events down with them with their somber, dire attitudes. Master Splinter takes entirely too long to explain to Casey Jones the extremely simple concept of ‘you are going to be very important in coming events.' It’s a complete wash of an issue and the very definition of filler. The ending cliffhanger, the new gang kidnaps a new character who could be dangerous in some vague way, was completely token and served not even to excite readers into buying the next issue, but to in some way resemble other comics that are trying to do that.

There’s a new gang of techno-thugs. Michelangelo’s unhappy. Life is hard. You’re now completely ready for issue #62. Skip this one.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #61 Writer: Tom Waltz Artist: David Wachter Colorist: Ronda Pattison Publisher: IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital

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